680, Commercial Road E14

No 680 on Commercial Road, Limehouse, is a building dated 1901, originally constructed as the Passmore Edwards Sailors Palace, designed by architects Niven and Wigglesworth. This structure features a finely detailed neo-Tudor Arts and Crafts style. The west wing has been rebuilt beyond the "gate house." The basement and ground floor are made of Portland stone, while the upper three floors are constructed of warm red brick with stone dressings and "pargeted" leaded panels.

The "gate house" at the corner has octagonal turrets flanking a three-storey oriel above a low arched entrance. The arch is richly carved, featuring good Arts and Crafts lettering, console tops, and a "figure head" keystone that rises to the oriel. The oriel itself has mullioned transomed leaded lights. The six-bay return to Beccles Street includes a segmental arcade of windows on the ground floor, with tripartite arrangements featuring leaded lights and thin panelled pilaster-mullions. The upper floor windows are vertically linked as flat "oriels," adorned with "pargeted" aprons and corbelled stone cornices above those on the top floor; these windows contain four leaded stone mullion-transom lights. The parapet of this elevation is finished with broad and short alternating shallow stone coped crenels. The basement area is enclosed by simple Arts and Crafts iron railings.